V1.09 Treasure Classes

While the concepts and general information on this page remain sound, the figures are from v1.09, and in some cases are no longer accurate.

Introduction

Treasure Classes are never seen in the course of playing Diablo II, but they are one of the most important things to know about the game code if you want to find a given item. The Treasure Classes, abbreviated "TC", list every base item in the game, and these are how the game determines what monsters or chests drop. There are 30 Armor and Weapon TCs, and many others for misc items, Runes, and more. There are also duplicate TCs with some melee weapons and bows in them, that are factored into the odds of which item will drop, but only from a few types of monsters.

What is a Treasure Class?

Treasure Classes are groupings of items with similar levels (Qlvl), one of which is picked to drop once a given TC is picked to drop from. There are 30 Weapon and Armor TCs, starting at 3, and going by 3's up to 90. Each TC contains all of the items of that type (weapons or armor) that have a level between that TC and the next lower one. For example Weapon 27 contains all weapons that are level 25, 26, and 27. Armor 27 contains all armors of level 25, 26, and 27. Weapon 30 contains all weapons that are lvl 28, 29, and 30. And so on. All monsters that can drop a given Armor can drop the same # Weapon TC. So if it can drop Weapon 84, it can drop Armor 84, though the odds for weapon or armor are often different from the same monster.

Every monster has a range of assigned TCs it may drop from, always starting at 3, and going upwards as the monsters get higher level later in the game. For a rule of thumb, most monsters top TC is about the same as their Mlvl, or slightly lower. So an Mlvl 70 monster's top TC would be 66 or 69, most likely. Everything can drop from Weapon or Armor 3, and the misc TCs, but hardly anything can drop from TC 90.

The TC selection is made when the monster dies, if it picks to drop an item. All TCs are checked at the same time, with various percentages assigned to every TC, depending on which monster or chest is dropping the item. Once a TC is selected the game selects an item from that TC, and then determines the quality of the item, factoring in your MF for that portion. MF has no effect on the TC or item from the TC selection.

All TCs are weighted, in terms of how likely a monster is to drop from them. Monsters are always very unlikely to drop from their highest possible TCs, and grow more likely to drop from a TC as you move down in number (there are some slight exceptions). If a monster can drop at most TC 84, the odds of it doing so are very poor. It would have better odds at dropping from TC 81, better than that from TC 78, better yet at TC 75, etc. So if you want to find an item from TC 84, generally speaking you're more likely to get it killing something that can drop all the way up to TC 90, than you are if you kill something that can only drop TC 84.

Here's a quick example of three popular monsters on hell difficulty. See the Monsters TC page for more tables like this.

Monsters	Armor 90	Armor 87	Armor 84	Armor 81
Pindleskin	1233 to 1	308 to 1	221 to 1	218 to 1
Baal	NA	989 to 1	124 to 1	97 to 1
Shenk	NA	NA	2339 to 1	324 to 1

As you can see, Pindleskin is the only one of these 3 that can drop from the highest TCs, Weapon and Armor 90, and his odds to do so are very poor, which is why items in TC 90 are virtually impossible to find. If you want something from TC 84, such as Lacquered Plate, the set version of which is Tal Rasha's Guardianship, Shenk can possibly drop it, but his odds to do so are tremendously poor. Just 1 out of every 2339 items he drops will be from Armor 84, and out of that he has just a 3/17 chance of dropping a Lacquered plate, and then your odds of it being a set item are figured from there.

Meanwhile, Pindleskin has far better odds of dropping something from Armor 84, over 10x better than Shenk's odds. Baal has even better odds, but takes longer to reach, which is why you need to figure more than just the straight odds when determining which monsters you want to spend your time killing.

A few other basic terms you should know.

What are the odds?

In each TC, every item has various odds of being selected. These are mostly unweighted. Most every type of normal armor or weapon has even odds. If there were 10 items, each would have a 1/10th chance of being picked. MF has no effect on this selection at all.

Class specific and some other item types have lower odds of dropping.

• All normal weapons and armor: 1/1 (or 3/3, if you prefer).
• All Assassin Claws: 2/3
• All other Class-Specific items: 1/3
• All wands/scepters/staves: 1/3

Remember that Orbs are Sorc class-specific, so they are 1/3, same as other spell-caster weapons.

This is the main reason the much-coveted Unique class specific items like Jalal's Mane, Arreat's Face, the Oculus, and the Herald of Zakarum are so hard to find, since their base items drop 1/3 as often as other base items in their TCs.

It is misleading to calculate your odds of finding a given item type by the odds of it dropping in that TC, since the odds of that TC being selected in the first place are so much longer. If you have a 1/700 chance of a TC being picked, having a 3/17 Vs. 2/17 chance of a given item in the TC hardly matters.

In addition, there are Bows TCs that contain every type of Bow (but not crossbow). These are only factored in when you kill certain ranged attacking monsters, with the effect of giving a slight bonus to those monsters dropping a bow, and therefore a slight penalty of dropping from all other TCs.

What is Quality Level? The Quality level (Qlvl) of an item is a major factor in all calculations. Every base item type has a Qlvl, and every Item Set has a Qlvl, and every Unique has a Qlvl. A monster must exceed the Qlvl of the Item Set, or the Unique, to drop that item, and of course they must be able to drop the base item as well. In many cases, especially with normal and exceptional Uniques, monsters near the max TC for that item can drop it, but can't drop the Unique version of it. Items once dropped have an Ilvl, which is determined by the monster that drops the item, or the level of the character who spawned that item if it was purchased from an NPC.

For example a Yew Wand is Qlvl 12, and the Unique version of it, Maelstrom, is Qlvl 19. So a monster must be able to drop from TC Weapon 12 to drop a Yew Wand, and must be at least Mlvl 19 for the Yew Wand to spawn Unique. If a level 23 monster dropped the Yew Wand, it would be Qlvl 12, but Ilvl 23. If hell Baal dropped a Yew Wand it would be Qlvl 12 and Ilvl 95. Qlvl is fixed, Ilvl varies. This is detailed in full on the Item Generation Page.

The Qlvl of base items is also the Clvl you must be to have them available to gamble. (For example Coronets are Qlvl 52, so you must be Clvl 52 to see Coronets in the window.) This includes the Excep and Elite versions of items as well. They don't show up in the gambling window, but once you are a sufficient Clvl you'll have a small % chance of getting one when you gamble the normal version of the item. There are no bonuses to the level you must be to see items. When gambling you do get +/- level bonuses on the affixes you can get, but there is no such randomization to the base items available. Read about Gambling/NPC sales on the item generation page for more details.

Unique and Set Items

Once a TC is selected, and an item is selected, the game will roll for item quality. It checks, in order, Unique > Set > Rare > Magical > High Quality > Normal. Each level of check your MF is factored in, more MF = better chance of higher quality. Monsters have weighting for the item quality as well; Act Bosses have much better odds of dropping high quality items than normal monsters do, and random bosses, Super Uniques and others are better than plain monsters, but worse than Act Bosses.

Related Reading

See the Item Generation Tutorial and the various Treasure Class lists in the Item Generation category for much more information about how items drop and how the TCs are created.